the yard cleaned, fixed up a stable, and a kitchen, even arranged a place for a bath…. For a whole week he was busily at work; but it was a pleasure afterwards to go into his room. Before the window stood a neat table, covered with various little things; in one corner was a set of shelves for books, with busts of Schiller and Goethe; on the walls hung maps, four Grevedon heads, and guns; near the table was an elegant row of pipes with clean mouthpieces; there was a rug in the outer room; all the doors shut and locked; the windows were hung with curtains. Everything in Fyodor Fedoritch’s room had a look of cleanliness and order.

It was quite a different thing in his comrades’ quarters. Often one could scarcely make one’s way across the muddy yard; in the outer room, behind a canvas screen, with its covering peeling off it, would lie stretched the snoring orderly; on the floor rotten straw; on the stove, boots and a broken jam-pot full of blacking; in the room itself a warped card-table, marked with chalk; on the table, glasses, half-full of cold, dark-brown tea; against the wall, a wide, rickety, greasy sofa; on the window-sills, tobacco-ash…. In a podgy, clumsy arm-chair one would find the master of the place in a grass-green dressing-gown with crimson plush facings and an embroidered smoking-cap of Asiatic extraction, and a hideously fat, unpleasant dog in a stinking brass collar would be snoring at his side…. All the doors always ajar….

Fyodor Fedoritch made a favourable impression on his new comrades. They liked him for his good-nature, modesty, warm-heartedness, and natural inclination for everything beautiful, for everything, in fact, which in another officer they might, very likely, have thought out of place. They called Kister a young lady, and were kind and gentle in their manners with him. Avdey Ivanovitch was the only one who eyed him dubiously. One day after drill Lutchkov went up to him, slightly pursing up his lips and inflating his nostrils:

‘Good-morning, Mr. Knaster.’

Kister looked at him in some perplexity.

‘A very good day to you, Mr. Knaster,’ repeated Lutchkov.

‘My name’s Kister, sir.’

‘You don’t say so, Mr. Knaster.’

Fyodor Fedoritch turned his back on him and went homewards. Lutchkov looked after him with a grin.

Next day, directly after drill he went up to Kister again.

‘Well, how are you getting on, Mr. Kinderbalsam?’

Kister was angry, and looked him straight in the face. Avdey Ivanovitch’s little bilious eyes were gleaming with malignant glee.

‘I’m addressing you, Mr. Kinderbalsam!’

‘Sir,’ Fyodor Fedoritch replied, ‘I consider your joke stupid and ill-bred—do you hear?—stupid and ill-bred.’

‘When shall we fight?’ Lutchkov responded composedly.

‘When you like,… to-morrow.’

Next morning they fought a duel. Lutchkov wounded Kister slightly, and to the extreme astonishment of the seconds went up to the wounded man, took him by the hand and begged his pardon. Kister had to keep indoors for a fortnight. Avdey Ivanovitch came several times to ask after him and on Fyodor Fedoritch’s recovery made friends with him. Whether he was pleased by the young officer’s pluck, or whether a feeling akin to remorse was roused in his soul—it’s hard to say… but from the time of his duel with Kister, Avdey Ivanovitch scarcely left his side, and called him first Fyodor, and afterwards simply Fedya. In his presence he became quite another man and—strange to say!—the change was not in his favour. It did not suit him to be gentle and soft. Sympathy he could not call forth in any one anyhow; such was his destiny! He belonged to that class of persons to whom has somehow been granted the privilege of authority over others; but nature had denied him the gifts essential for the justification of such a privilege. Having received no education, not being distinguished by intelligence, he ought not to have revealed himself; possibly his malignancy had its origin in his consciousness of the defects of his bringing up, in the desire to conceal himself altogether under one unchanging mask. Avdey Ivanovitch had at first forced himself to despise people, then he began to notice that it was not a difficult matter to intimidate them, and he began to despise them in reality. Lutchkov enjoyed cutting short by his very approach all but the most vulgar conversation. ‘I know nothing, and have learned nothing, and I have no talents,’ he said to himself; ‘and so you too shall know nothing and not show off your talents before me….’ Kister, perhaps, had made Lutchkov abandon the part he had taken up—just because before his acquaintance with him, the bully had never met any one genuinely idealistic, that is to say, unselfishly and simple-heartedly absorbed in dreams, and so, indulgent to others, and not full of himself.

Avdey Ivanovitch would come sometimes to Kister, light a pipe and quietly sit down in an arm-chair. Lutchkov was not in Kister’s company abashed by his own ignorance; he relied—and with good reason—on his German modesty.

‘Well,’ he would begin, ‘what did you do yesterday? Been reading, I’ll bet, eh?’

‘Yes, I read….’

‘Well, and what did you read? Come, tell away, old man, tell away.’ Avdey Ivanovitch kept up his bantering tone to the end.

‘I read Kleist’s Idyll. Ah, what a fine thing it is! If you don’t mind, I’ll translate you a few lines….’ And Kister translated with fervour, while Lutchkov, wrinkling up his forehead and compressing his lips, listened attentively…. ‘Yes, yes,’ he would repeat hurriedly, with a disagreeable smile,’it’s fine… very fine… I remember, I’ve read it… very fine.’

‘Tell me, please,’ he added affectedly, and as it were reluctantly, ‘what’s your view of Louis the Fourteenth?’

And Kister would proceed to discourse upon Louis the Fourteenth, while Lutchkov listened, totally failing to understand a great deal, misunderstanding a part… and at last venturing to make a remark…. This threw him into a cold sweat; ‘now, if I’m making a fool of myself,’ he thought. And as a fact he often did make a fool of himself. But Kister was never off-hand in his replies; the good-hearted youth was inwardly rejoicing that, as he thought, the desire for enlightenment was awakened in a fellow-creature. Alas! it was from no desire for enlightenment that Avdey Ivanovitch questioned Kister; God knows why he did! Possibly he wished to ascertain for himself what sort of head he, Lutchkov, had, whether it was really dull, or simply untrained. ‘So I really am stupid,’ he said to himself more than once with a bitter smile; and he would draw himself up instantly and look rudely and insolently about him, and smile malignantly to himself if he caught some comrade dropping his eyes before his glance. ‘All right, my man, you’re so learned and well educated,…’ he would mutter between his teeth. ‘I’ll show you… that’s all….’

The officers did not long discuss the sudden friendship of Kister and Lutchkov; they were used to the duellist’s queer ways. ‘The devil’s made friends with the baby,’ they said…. Kister was warm in his praises of his friend on all hands; no one disputed his opinion, because they were afraid of Lutchkov; Lutchkov himself never mentioned Kister’s name before the others, but he dropped his intimacy with the perfumed adjutant.

II

The landowners of the South of Russia are very keen on giving balls, inviting officers to their houses, and marrying off their daughters.

About seven miles from the village of Kirilovo lived just such a country gentleman, a Mr. Perekatov, the owner of four hundred souls, and a fairly spacious house. He had a daughter of eighteen, Mashenka, and a wife, Nenila Makarievna. Mr. Perekatov had once been an officer in the cavalry, but from love of a country life and from indolence he had retired and had begun to live peaceably and quietly, as landowners of the middling sort do live. Nenila Makarievna owed her existence in a not perfectly legitimate manner to a distinguished gentleman of Moscow.

Her protector had educated his little Nenila very carefully, as it is called, in his own house, but got her off his hands rather hurriedly, at the first offer, as a not very marketable article. Nenila Makarievna was ugly; the distinguished gentleman was giving her no more than ten thousand as dowry; she snatched eagerly at Mr. Perekatov. To Mr. Perekatov it seemed extremely gratifying to marry a highly educated, intellectual young lady… who was, after all, so closely related to so illustrious a personage. This illustrious personage extended his patronage to the young people even after the marriage, that is to say, he accepted presents of salted quails from them and called Perekatov ‘my dear boy,’ and sometimes simply, ‘boy.’ Nenila Makarievna took complete possession of her husband, managed everything, and looked after the whole property—very sensibly, indeed; far better, any way, than Mr. Perekatov could have done. She did not hamper her partner’s liberty too much; but she kept him well in hand, ordered his clothes herself, and dressed him in the English style, as is fitting and proper for a country gentleman. By her instructions, Mr. Perekatov grew a little Napoleonic beard on his chin, to cover a large wart, which looked like an over-ripe raspberry. Nenila Makarievna, for her part, used to inform visitors that her husband played the flute, and that all flute-players always let the beard grow under the lower lip; they could hold their instrument more comfortably. Mr. Perekatov always, even in the early morning, wore a high, clean stock, and was well combed and washed. He was, moreover, well content with his lot; he dined very well, did as he liked, and slept all